Sarah's update
1 August 2010
Hello, this is Sarah, the oldest daughter of Farmer Gary. I
am writing this post because people are asking for one but my father
is too busy between building his new office, taking care of the
coffee trees, and working with our newest intern (okay, not really,
he is just feeling kind of lazy but those are his excuses).
It has been over 4 years since I last wrote a post and a lot has
changed. Well, I guess not that much seeing as how I still live on
a coffee farm in Hawaii and I still own a lot of pets. So you have
heard repeatedly of what my Dad does on the farm but I am just as big of
a part of it as he is. What do I do to help out? First of all,
and probably most importantly, I answer the phone when he is out working.
My dad being a business owner always has somebody trying to call him whether
it is people wanting to buy coffee, be an intern on the farm, asking about
the tractor (it is for sell if you want to buy it), or sometimes just his
friend Matt wanting to go to the beach.
I also help package coffee, bring the coffee to the mail box (the driveway
is about a fourth of a mile long so I will take a walk to the mail box
between chores and school work), stir coffee, carry buckets back and forth
after the freshly picked coffee has been process, clean the house, help with
the tours, and take care of the animals. As you can see, even I play
my part on the farm. But enough about me you probably want to hear
about what my Dad has been doing.
If you have ever been to our house you know it is pretty small, small enough
that my Dad’s old “office” was just a computer desk in his bedroom. That
is no longer true. Well, I guess the house is still small, but the point
is my dad is adding on an office right outside of his bedroom on the wrap-around
deck. This is his most recent project. It has been easier than the
barn because there is already a roof. If you haven’t been reading this
blog since before the barn, there were a lot of problems with rain and the barn
not having the roof up.
Other then the office we also have a new intern. This would be our
*counts* fourth intern. His name is JT and hopefully later on my
father will write a story about him or have JT write one himself.
As I mentioned above, the rainy season has began. If you don’t know what
I mean by the ‘rainy season’, here in Hawaii we have only two seasons instead
of four, the wet one (where it is warm with rain usually in the afternoon and
sometimes on and off all day) and the dry one (where it is usually colder with
no rain for days and sometimes weeks). Starting from the middle of December
and going until about the middle of May we had a drought. The trees were
dying, our water tanks were empty, and things were not looking good. Now
the rain is back and the mosquito population is as big as ever. That also
means weeds to be removed, grass to be mowed, trees to be fertilized, and coffee
to be picked and pulped. Since all of the work has picked up speed we are
kept busy with chores.
So here on the farm life continues as normal and I apologize for the lack of blog
posts recently. Hopefully my Dad will take the time to write one soon.
In the mean time drink some coffee, read some posts my dad wrote years ago, and
sit back and relax as we stay busy growing more Kona coffee.
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